In my role as an engineering manager, I know making the leap from an individual contributor (IC) to engineering manager (EM) is not a promotion. Instead, it’s a different career track. What we are discussing here is a fundamental difference in terms of the responsibilities of the roles. What you do as an engineering manager versus what you do as a developer is fundamentally different. There is a possibility that you might not write code altogether. A promotion means continuing to do the same thing, while being paid more to do it. Becoming an engineering manager means transitioning to a different role with different responsibilities. In other words, a separate career track.
First, let’s break down our target audience into two groups. One group who is transitioning into engineering management. And then, the second, folks who have been made engineering managers recently. For those who are still considering, this decision could be made due to a couple of factors. It could be tenure-based, it happens in many companies where you are the senior-most engineer, or you have spent a fixed amount of time. The company or the team believes that you're ready for managerial responsibilities, asking you to make the switch. This is a more traditional track that we see. Alternatively, there's a more interest-based approach that you could be even at a mid to senior software engineer level.
After working with a diverse set of software engineering teams, we at Moesif have gained a unique perspective on what traits enable engineers to take on leadership positions and become outstanding managers vs others who have a harder time rising through the ranks. Gaining an advanced title and responsibility is not an easy task. After all, there are far more software engineers than executives at a company regardless of size. So how do you stand out to land that awesome VP or C-suite role? To understand what makes a great leader, it’s best to understand from the perspective of the person driving the promotion.
The mindset of leadership
Engineering naturally applies logical reasoning to a set of problems or challenges. Whether it’s to build and scale a new data platform, or how to gain a leadership title. Engineers love to “grade” a system on metrics such as performance or defect rate. This can even manifest into orchestrated mass testing activities such as the familiar Hackathon. Yet, the CEO or CTO probably doesn’t care how fast you can code an Uber clone or hook up some API. Even the usual textbook items of soft skills matter less. While it’s handy to have great communication and speaking skills, there are many executives who dread going up on a stage to present some eye candy. So what is it?
At each company I’ve worked, we have had a split between time spent on Product initiatives and Engineering work. The percentages always changed, sometimes 70% Product, 30% Engineering, sometimes as much as a 50/50 split. The impetus is to make sure that Engineering spends a portion of their time building new features, but also ensures we can do “our own” work such as address technical debt, upgrade systems, and document our code.
The trouble is, it’s one thing to say this at the outset, and another to make it a reality. There are some reasons that I’ve seen this model fail, not because people don’t understand in theory that it’s valuable, but because in practice, there are some common pitfalls that you have to think through. We’ll cover some of these scenarios from the perspective of an Engineering leader so that we can address a good path forward.
The issues
Some of the pointers below are reactions and planning based on what can go wrong, so let’s talk first about the challenges you can encounter if this isn’t set up right.
Product may have conflicts, either with the work itself or the time involved. This can strain the relationship between Product and Engineering. If they are caught by surprise, you can potentially find the boundaries of your work getting more restrictive.
Your engineers might not understand what’s expected of them. Parallelization of efforts can be hard to do, so building a good process can provide clarity.
Maintenance path should be clear: Are you planning on making a giant system upgrade? This may affect other teams over time and if you’re not clear about eventual ownership, it could come back to haunt you. 👻
As nice as it is to have some freedom in your engineering time, communication, planning, and clear expectations can help make sure that you avoid any of the issues outlined above.
Once you figure out what problem you would like to tackle, it’s critical to write up a small one-sheeter that you can share with stakeholders on the nature of the work, the amount of time it’s going to take, and why it’s important.
If it’s a large project, you can also scope those pieces down into GitHub/GitLab/Jira issues, and add a label for the type of work that it is. This is great because you can use whatever project management system you already use to elevate the amount of work and expectations weekly. It’s good to keep the dialogue open with your Product partners on scope and the nature of the work so they aren’t surprised by other work getting done. This will largely vary by the culture of the team and organization.
This can help provide clarity for your Engineers, too. If they understand the nature of the work and what’s expected of them, it’s easier for them to tackle the small issues that make up a whole.
You may find that it makes less sense from a focus perspective to have every engineer split time across product and engineering projects. They may instead prefer to split the work up between themselves: three people on product work for a few weeks, one person on engineering work. There are also times where everyone does need to be involved so that they have equal institutional knowledge (migrations can be like this, depending on what it is). Your mileage may vary based on the size of the team, the amount of product work, and the type of project.
Communication helps here, too — if you’re not sure what the right path is, it can help to have a small brainstorm as a group on how you want to get this done. Just be sure you also align everyone with why the project is important as you do so.
Types of projects
There are many types of projects that you can create in your Engineering team time, and each has slightly different approaches from what I’ve seen, so let’s go over each one of them.
Tech debt
Let’s address technical debt first because that’s one of the most common pieces of work that can unlock your team. For every feature you write, if Engineering effort is slowed, you’re not only losing time in terms of product development, you’re also losing money in terms of engineering time in salary.
A bit of technical debt is natural, particularly at smaller companies where it makes more fiscal sense to move quickly, but there are some points where tech debt becomes crippling for development and releases, and makes a codebase unstable. Sometimes it needs to be done immediately to make sure all your engineers can work efficiently, and sometimes it’s gradual.
In a lot of cases, the technical debt pieces are things you learn you need by a bottoms-up approach: the devs that are closest to working with the system will know best what day-to-day technical debt exists than Engineering Managers (EMs) typically will. The challenge as an EM is to notice larger patterns, like when many folks complain of the same thing, rather than one dev who may have a strong opinion. Asking around before you start this type of project can help — poll people on how much time they think they’re wasting in a given week vs the prospect of an alternative.
Sometimes technical debt is a matter of a large amount of refactor. I’ve seen this go best when people are up front on what kind of pull requests (PR) are necessary. Do you need to update the CSS in a million spots? Or convert old class components to hooks? You probably don’t want one huge PR for all of it, but it doesn’t make sense to break this work per-component either. Work together as a team on how much each PR will hold and what is expected of the review so you don’t create a “review hole” while the work is being done.
A lot of companies will do hack week/innovation week projects where devs can work on some feature related to the company’s product untethered. It’s a great time for exploration, and I’ve seen some powerful features added to well-known applications this way. It’s also incredibly energizing for the team to see an idea of their own come to fruition.
The trouble with doing these kinds of projects in the split engineering time is that you can, at times, make the Product team feel a little slighted. Why? Well, think of things from their perspective. Their job is to put forth these features, plan carefully with stakeholders, put together roadmaps (often based on company metrics and research), and get on the Engineering schedule, usually working with a project manager. If you spend half your time working on unplanned features, you can potentially fork an existing plan for a project, go against some of the known research they have, or simply slow down the process to get a core make-it-or-break it feature they need.
The way I’ve seen this play out well is when the EM communicates up front with Product. Consider this a partnership: if Product says that a particular feature doesn’t make sense, they likely have a good reason for thinking so. If you can both hear each other out, there is likely a path forward where you both agree.
It’s good to address their fears, too. Are they concerned that there won’t be enough time for product work? Ask your team directly how many weeks at half time they think it might take (with the expectations that things might shift once they dig in). Make it clear to everyone that you don’t expect it to be done at a break-neck pace.
Ultimately, communication is key. Ideally, these are small projects that won’t derail anything that can be done in parallel to the regular work. My suggestion is to try it with something very small first to see what bumps in the road there might be, and also build trust with Product that you’ll still get your work done and not “go rogue.”
The final piece of this is to figure out who is responsible for metrics, outcomes, and when things don’t go well. Part of the reason Product gets to decide direction is because they’re on the hook when it fails. Make sure you’re clear that as an Engineering leader, you’re taking responsibility for outcomes, both the good andthe bad to maintain a good relationship.
Slow, ongoing work
This is probably the most clear-cut of any of the types of projects and will likely get the least amount of pushback from anyone. Examples of this type of work is internal documentation, tooling (if you don’t have a dedicated tools team), or small bits of maintenance.
The communication needed here is a little different from other projects, as it’s not necessarily going to be one constrained project that you ship, but rather an iterative process. Take documentation as an example: I would suggest building time for internal documentation into any feature process.
For instance, let’s say you created a new feature that allows teams to collaborate. Not everyone across the company may know that you created a microservice for this feature that any team can use, and what parameters are expected, or how to add functionality down the road. Internal docs can be the difference between the service being used, as well as your team being asked to pair with someone every time someone needs to use it. Or worse: them trying to hack around and figure it out on their own, creating a mess of something that could have been worked on quicker and more efficiently.
Unlike the innovation projects, slow, ongoing work is typically not something folks really crave doing, so setting a process and expectations up straightaway works best. Internal documentation is a sometimes hidden but very important part of a well-functioning team. It helps with onboarding, getting everyone on the same page about system architecture, and can even help devs really solidify what they built and think through how they’re solving it.
Migrations are handled a little differently than some other types of projects because it likely affects everyone. There is no one right way to do this, and will also largely depend on what type of migration it is — framework to framework, breaking down a monolith, and migrating to a different build process or server all may have different approaches. Due to the fact that each one of these is likely an article of its own, let’s go through some high level options that apply to the organization of them.
My first suggestion is to do as much research as possible up front on whatever type of migration you’re doing. There’s no way to know everything, but you don’t want to get part-way through a process to find out something critical. This is also helpful information to share with stakeholders.
Are there internal debates about what direction your company should head in? Timebox a unit of time to work through the problem and make sure you have a clear decision-maker at the end. A lot of tech problems don’t have one “true” solution, so having one owner make the decision and everyone else disagree and commit can help. But you also want to give a moment for folks to have their voices heard about what gives them pause, even if they are in disagreement — they might be thinking of something you’re not.
Document a migration plan, both at a high level and then work through the impact on each team. This is also a great time to explain to Product why this work is important: is your codebase becoming old and can no longer play well with other libraries and tools? Did a new build process come out that could save your engineers time in a release process? Help them understand why the work is critical.
Be clear about maintenance and ownership. If one team migrates a build process that then causes issues for another, who’s fixing things to unblock that team? You should decide this before it happens.
Some migration paths allow you do things slowly over time, or team by team, or do a lot of the work up front. However, there is usually a time when it’s going to be critical and all hands on deck are needed. Unlike some of the other work that can be parallelized, you may have to work something out with Product where all other feature work is stalled for a little bit while you get the new system in place. If you work closely with them, you may find that there are times in the season where you naturally have more of a customer lull, and it could give you the breathing room you need to get this done. I’d suggest that if they’re willing to let you take Engineering time to 100% for a little while, you return the favor; and once the platform is stable, dedicate 100% of the team’s time to Product work.
Celebrate!
This final step might seem optional, but it’s a big deal in my opinion. Your team just pulled off something incredible: they parallelized efforts, they were good partners to Product, they got something done for the Engineering org at large. It’s crucial to celebrate the work like you would a launch.
The team needs to know you value this work because it’s often thankless, but very impactful. It can also build trust to know that if something hairy comes up in the future, that it does actually help their career path as well. Celebrating with your team what you accomplished costs very little, and has great cultural impacts.
I’ve been a manager for many years at companies of different scale. Through these experiences, I’ve done my share of learning, and made some mistakes along that way that were important lessons for me. I want to share those with you.
But before diving in, I want to mention a strong caveat that my advice may be unique to my situation because I’m white and a woman in tech. My experiences may be relevant to that point of view, but your mileage may vary.
Another huge caveat: I’m sharing mistakes I’ve made so far in the interest of helping others, but I’m sure I’m not done making mistakes, either. I don’t have it all figured it out, I’m still on this journey.
Mistake 1: Thinking people give feedback the way they want to receive it
Feedback is one of the most important tools you have as a manager, but it can also be incredibly disruptive with poor execution. One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is that humans aren’t pure functions: an input that works one day and gets one result, then again another day and get an entirely different result.
The same is true of how people give and receive feedback: someone may give you feedback in a particular way, but they prefer to receive much differently when it comes to themselves.
How do you get around this? Asking helps. I’ve started doing an exercise with my team where I ask the group as a whole how they would like to get feedback. Not only does it open up ideas, but it also helps that each individual has to think for themselves how they prefer to receive feedback. Normalizing this type of vulnerability and self-reflection can help us all feel like partners, instead of some top-down edict.
Another thing that’s helped? Asking folks directly in a one-on-one meeting if they have feedback for me as a manager, and following up with an anonymous survey. Again, it makes things feel less one-sided and provides everyone the opportunity to say things that they might not want to say directly to my face, which I know can be tough.
And lastly, if something comes up, addressing it immediately can be helpful. There’s nothing worse than your manager having an issue with something you did and only finding out about it three months later, especially if it’s tied to a performance review that you could have impacted had they been transparent earlier.
The truth is that even my advice here is imperfect. Feedback is tough. Being honest and improving together as a team is awkward. It’s incredibly worth it, though. That’s where the real growth is. That said, no two people are alike, no two groups are alike, and you may have to use your best judgement given the situation at hand.
Mistake 2: Trying to do everything yourself as a manager is the best way to help
Years ago, I managed a woman who was bright, talented, capable, and an all around pleasure. She was sort of new to the industry and could come across as timid, so I did my best to be a poop umbrella for her, fighting battles behind the scenes to set her up for success. She was on a steady track to land a senior role. Even after I decided to leave the company, I let the next manager know this person is track for a senior position in the next few months.
Then I moved to another city. Years later, I met up with the woman and was shocked to learn she never got the position.
Here’s what I learned: her promotion wasn’t the same high priority for the capable hands I left her in as it was for me. The team was challenged with a million other things that took center stage to the extent that her promotion fell off the radar. But even more than that, what became very clear to me was that all of that “protection” I thought I had set up for her didn’t really serve her well for the long haul. For example, I didn’t teach her how to advocate for herself or how to navigate the system. I vowed never to make that mistake again.
This is tough! If you’re strong and care about your team as people, it can feel very unnatural to teach someone to advocate instead of moving things out of their way themselves. And the point is not to throw that person into the fire. The point is to care. Are you teaching the things they need to learn? Are they really growing under you? Feeling like you’re protecting someone at all costs also lead to your own ego trip, too, which threatens progress.
Try to think through what skills someone needs to succeed without you. Teach those things incrementally. Sure, this is easy advice to say, but it’s really hard to do in the thick of things. Spend some time with it, and think through ways you can inject that learning into everyday work and interactions.
Mistake 3: Communicating something one time is enough
No one likes to feel like they’re repeating themselves. It’s annoying to say someone more than once, and it’s annoying to hear something over and again. But if you have a big enough group and there’s enough going on, things are going to slip through the cracks, so repetition becomes an important tool to make things stick. The trick is to say the same things, but in different ways.
There was a time last year when I asked my team to do something and none of them did it. What happened there? Given that it’s a team of highly efficient, strong collaborators, do you think they just all table-flipped and didn’t take action? Not a chance. I was the one who wasn’t clear. In fact, you can probably guess that if a whole group of people don’t understand or take action, the chance is that you, the manager, are the common denominator for why something is blocked. Not only did I not repeat myself enough to be clear, I didn’t align anyone with the why of the purpose of the task. It’s pretty easy to forget or not prioritize doing something if you have no clue why you’re doing it. Repeat yourself and align the group with the importance of the task and you’ll likely have a better result.
Think of all the ways we have to communicate these days: chats, emails, video meetings, texts, document comments, and so much more. And because some people communicate better in one medium than another, using all of the platforms have in various mediums becomes a strategy for repetition without nagging.
I’ve found that what work best is allowing everyone to own the information themselves. For example, if your team practices career laddering, the individual can read aloud each of the ladders in one-on-one and then talk you through their responses to each item. That way, you’re not lecturing — they are owning where they are and what the next steps are as you guide them along.
Mistake 4: You have to have everything together all the time
Some folks think that management looks like a steel fortress of preparedness and authority. I’m not so sure about that.
If something goes wrong, are you more likely to tell the manager acts as though they have everything together all the time, or the manager owns their mistakes? The truth is that your team needs to know you’re human. You can’t fix problems if you don’t know about them, and no one will tell you about them unless you make space for that.
One time, the night before a big release, someone on the team pushed a change that created thousands upon thousands of calls to a service that, in turn, thought it was the target of a DDoS attack, which then shut down our access. Here’s a moment when a lot of folks could have panicked and blamed one another. Instead, we giggled wildly, jumped into chat and on calls, fixed it, and kept going.
I couldn’t have been more proud of the team that day. Their response was wonderful. And it makes all the difference in how we work together, recover, and iterate.
You’re the manager, so if someone is going to show vulnerability first, it’s easiest on team dynamics if it’s you. You can try this by admitting you’re having a bad day, that you don’t understand something, or that made a mistake. You don’t have to do this constantly, a little is helpful.
This is way tougher if you are an underrepresented minority in tech. People will definitely think of an admitted mistake coming from one person as humility and another as failure. I myself struggle with this, too. I think it’s ok to admit that and feel the situation out given your circumstance.
Being a manager is tough. Your mistakes impact people, and that feeling of pressure can be a little isolating. I’ve made all of the mistakes above and more. I feel it’s critical to share so that when we encounter pitfalls, we don’t feel so alone and have a potential path forward.
The code review process is an essential key to maintaining and improving product quality. But it can also be a bottleneck, an unnerving activity for your development team, and may reduce your development productivity. Therefore, you should care about the best practices of the code reviewprocess outlined in this article.
Why Should You Care About Code Reviews?
Most development teams already know the importance of code review activity as practitioners. This section tells C-Levels,Product Managers, andEngineering Managers that investing in code review rewards you with better products and better development teams.
With the Coronavirus economic crash, companies are scrambling to reduce costs. For many online and technology companies, however, the shift to online work and online learning and streaming media means their services are more in demand than ever. So how do you address the need to scale back your spending and at the same time scale up your services? Here are some suggestions:
Assess Your Team and Resources
Personnel costs may be your largest expense right now, but they are also the only way of driving down all your other costs. You will need to reduce your technology costs through your engineering team and its core competencies, so you need to understand those competencies clearly as you construct your plan to reduce costs. Before you start laying people off, make sure you understand what your teams are capable of, and who will be instrumental in helping you weather the economic storm. You need to have a team that will fit your technology, and vice versa.
How do you measure quality in software engineering? I guess this is the question there will always be a debate on. There are so many approaches to this question that finding only one answer is just impossible. In this article, we will be listing the quality-related metrics that the top engineering teams have been keeping track of, and see when and how you should use them.
However, note that when you think about it, one can wonder if the quality is a goal in itself. The confidence in being able to grow and change behaviors without disruption seems to be more what matters. In that case, quality metrics are surely important, but their evolution over time is at least as important.
What do we mean by 1:1 (pronounced one-on-one)? This is typically a private conversation between an Engineering Manager/Lead and their Employee. I personally have been a Lead, a Manager, and also an Independent Contributor/Software Engineer, so I’ve sat at each side of the table. I’ve both had great experiences on each side and have made mistakes on each side. That said, I'm going to cover some meditations on the subject because 1:1s open opportunities for personal and professional growth when they're effective.
What I’ve noticed about Software Engineering as a discipline, in particular, is that it has many people sharing posts about technical implementations and very few about engineering management. Management can influence and impact our ability to code efficiently and hone our craft, so it’s worth exploring publicly.
My thoughts on this change a lot and, like all humans, I’m always learning, so please don’t take any of these opinions as gospel. Think of them more like a dialogue where we can bounce ideas off one another.
Establishing baseline rules
I believe that 1:1s are crucial and should not be the kind of meeting anyone takes lightly, whether on the management or employee side. The meetings should have a regular cadence, scheduled either once a week or biweekly and only cancelled for pressing circumstances — and if they have to be cancelled, it's a good practice to let the other person know why rather than simply removing it from the calendar.
It might be tempting to think remote working means fewer 1:1s, but it's quite the opposite. Since each person is in a different space on a day-to-day basis, 1:1s help make up for sporadic contact by meeting regularly.
1:1s should be conducted in a space with the smallest amount of distractions possible. If you are in a room with one other person, shut off your computer and use a notepad so you won’t get notifications. If doing a 1:1 remotely, make sure you’re in a quiet place and that it has stable internet bandwidth. And, please, avoid taking 1:1s in a car or while running errands. It's also worth trying to limit the time you spend in noisy environments, like cafes. Another tip: if you have to be outside, wear headphones. Again, this is all for the benefit of limiting distractions so that everyone's focus is on the meeting itself.
Honestly, I would rather someone cancel on me or push the meeting off until they’re in a quiet place than take a call swarming with distractions. Nothing says, “I don’t value your time,” like multitasking during a 1:1 meeting. The whole purpose of the 1:1 should be to make the other person feel valuable and connected.
1:1s are crucial. If we constantly work on tasks without taking the time to step back and check in with our work, we risk being tactical rather than strategic. We risk working in a silo, which can lead to burnout and anxiety. We risk opportunities to spot errors early and reduce technical debt. At their root, 1:1s should reduce uncertainty by making us feel more connected to the rest of the team while clarifying intent.
For example, on the employee side, you might not be sure whether to invest your time in Task A or Task B and the progress of your commits slows down as a result. Which one is higher priority? On the manager side, you might not be sure what's happening — the employee could be stuck on a problem. They could be burnt out, but it's tough to be sure. It's totally normal for someone to get stuck once in a while, but it's common to not want to announce it in front of others, perhaps out of fear of embarrassment, among other things. A 1:1 is a good, safe, private place to explore concerns before they become tangible problems because they offer privacy that some open floor plans simply do not.
This privacy part is important. Candid exploration of high level topics, like career goals, or even low level topics, like code reviews, are best done and that is easier to do with one person in a private space rather than a full audience out in the open. At their best, 1:1s should create a good environment to resolve some of these issues.
Employees and managers alike should be fully invested in the meeting. This means using active body language that shows attention. This means emphasizing listening and speaking in turn without interrupting the other person.
Connection
Belonging is a core tenant of Maslow's hierarchy of needs because, as humans, we're designed for connectedness and kinship. I know this article is about engineering management, but engineers are no less in need of empathy and human connection than any other person in any other profession.
The reason I include this at all is because connecting with others on a personal level is something I really need to work on myself. I’m awkward. I’m an introvert. I don’t always know how to talk to people. But I do know that there have been plenty of 1:1s where I either felt heard or that I was hearing someone else. In other words, I felt in connected to the other person, be it through shared goals, personal similarities, or even common gripes about something.
A friend of mine mentioned that "people leave managers, not jobs." This is, for the most part, so true! Simply taking the time to develop a connection where a manager and employee both know each other better creates a higher level of comfort that can go a long way towards many benefits, including employee retention.
It might be worth asking the other person what modality works best if you're remote. Some people prefer video chats; some people prefer phone calls. That's all part of fostering a better connection.
1:1s are more for employees than managers
Don't let that headline give you pause. Yes, these meetings are for both parties. They really are. But here’s the thing: in the balance of power, the manager can always speak directly to the employee. The inverse isn’t always true. There are also dynamics between teammates. That means the manager’s job in a 1:1 is to provide a space for the employee to speak clearly and freely about concerns, particularly ones that might impact their performance.
Ideally, a manager will listen more than an employee, but a back and forth dialogue can be healthy, too. A 1:1 where a manager is speaking the most is probably the least productive. This isn't team time; it's time to give an employee the floor because it otherwise might not happen in other venues.
In my experience, it’s best if a manager first learns the an employee's Ultimate Goals™. Where do they see themselves in five years? What kind of work they like to do most? What environments do they work in best and which ones are the most difficult? A manager can’t always facilitate the ideal situation, but having this information is still extremely valuable for cultivating a person’s career trajectory, for the work that needs to be done, and for a general understanding of what will keep people working well together.
Let's say you have two employees: one wants to be a Principal Architect someday and another who tells you that they love refactoring. That actually gives you pretty good insight for a project that requires one person to drive direction and another to clean up the legacy code in preparation for the refactor!
Or, say you have an employee that wants to be Director someday but rarely helps others. You also concurrently get an intern. This is your chance to develop one's mentoring skills and scale the other's engineering skills.
When these meetings are focused on the employee instead of the manager, they help the employee feel heard and motivated, which can bolster their career and also give the manager the ability to make bigger decisions about how everyone works together to accomplish their individual and collective goals.
Yes, even though 1:1s have a tendency to be informal because everyone already knows each other well, they’re way more successful when there's an agenda, at least in my opinion. And no, it’s not important for the agendas to be super formal either. They could be a couple bullet points on a sheet of paper. Or even items added to a private Slack channel. What's most important is that both parties come prepared to talk.
If both the manager and the employee have agendas, my preference is to either defer priority to the employee, or compare lists up front to prioritize items. It might be that the manager has to discuss something pressing and sensitive, like a team reorg that affects the employee's agenda. Regardless, communication is key. In a best-case scenario, you’re both in lock step and that all agenda items actually overlap.
Employees: Sometimes weeks are tough and it's easy to get frustrated. Taking time to write an agenda keeps the meeting from being all, “I hate everything and how could you have done me so wrong,” and more focused on actionable items. Why not just vent? Sure, there's a time and place for venting, but the problem with it is that your manager is a person, and might not know exactly how to help you on an emotional level. Having specific topics and items make it facilitate more actionable feedback for your manager, and therefore, make them better able to support you.
Managers: Let’s face it, you’re probably juggling a million plates. (That metaphor might be wrong, but you catch my drift.) There’s a lot on your mind and most of it is confidential. Agenda give you the context you need to prevent wandering into topics you might not be at liberty to discuss. It also keeps things on track. Are there four more things you need to cover and you’re already 15 minutes into a 30-minute meeting? You’re less likely to pontificate about your early career or foray into irrelevant paths and stay focused on the task and human right in front of you.
Direction and Guidance
One thing that a 1:1 can be useful for is guidance. On a few occasions, I’ve checked in with an employee who's communicated feeling like they’re in over their heads — whether they've overcommitted or have such a tall task in front of them, they’re not sure how to proceed and feel anxious to the point of paralysis.
As mentioned before, this is a great opportunity for a manager to reduce uncertainty. Some ways to do that:
Prioritize. If there’s too much work, spend time talking through the most important pieces, and even perhaps offer yourself as a shield from some of the work.
Make action items. Sometimes a task is too large and the employee needs help breaking it down into organized pieces making it easier to know where to start and how to move forward.
Clarify vision. People might feel overwhelmed because they don’t know why they’re doing something. If you can communicate the necessity of the work at hand, then it can align them with the goal of the project and make the work more rewarding and valuable.
One risk here is passive listening. For example, there's a fine line between knowing when to let an employee vent and when that venting needs actionable solutions. Or both! I have no hard rules about when one is needed over the other, and I sometimes get this wrong myself. This is why eye contact and active listening is important. You’ll receive subtle cues from the person that help reveal what is needed in the situation.
If you’re an employee and your manager isn’t providing the listening mode you need from them, I think it’s OK to gently mention that. Your manager isn’t a mind reader, and in many cases, they haven’t even received management training to develop proper listening skills. It’s perfectly fine to say something along the lines of, "It would be really great if you could sit with me and help me prioritize all these tasks on my to do list,” or “I really need to vent right now, but some of the venting is stuff I think is valuable for you to know about." Personally, I love it when someone tells me what they need. I’m usually trying to figure that out, so it takes out the guesswork.
Meeting adjourned...
You spend many waking hours at work. It’s important that your working relationships — particularly between manager and employee — are healthy and that you're intentionally checking in with purpose, both in the short-term and the long-term.
1:1s may appear to be time hogs on the calendar, but over the long haul, you’ll find they save valuable time. As a manager, having a team of employees who feel valued, aligned and connected is about the best thing you can ask for. So, value them because you'll get solid value in return.
